2003-05-25 04:00:00 PDT Seaside, Monterey County -- There's a new army at Fort Ord, and it's not wearing olivedrab.

The new troops are carpenters, electricians, masons, plasterers and home buyers. These wage earners and soon-to-be mortgage holders are part of the first civilian residential project on the former Fort Ord Army base.

The development of Seaside Highlands, a partnership of KB Home and Bakewell Homes, will put 380 houses across the contoured landscape of one of the former dependent housing sites.

After more than seven decades of military use, part of the 28,000-acre base,

stretching inland from the coast between the cities of Seaside and Marina in Monterey County, is being dressed in civilian clothes.

And it is not an affordable housing project. Prices for the 12 different styles of homes to be built here range from $569,000 to $734,000.

A bustling training center for the U.S. Army during three wars, the base has only a small military population now.

The base was turned over to civilian use in 1994, and thousands of acres became a Superfund cleanup project because of the unexploded ordnance littering the hills and dunes of the base.

The Seaside Highlands project is not part of the Superfund zone, according to Seaside city officials.

More than 7,000 acres of the base were transferred to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and have been opened to public use for hiking and horseback riding.

Another 6,000 acres were turned over to the cities of Marina, Seaside and Del Rey Oaks and to Monterey County for residential, commercial and educational projects. The California State Unversity at Monterey has a campus site on the north side of the base.

Seaside Highlands is one of two sites Seaside has zoned for residential development. The city also hopes to approve a commercial and retail development on the eastern side of the base. The site of the second residential development is being negotiated with the Army, which wants to exchange land with the city to build new housing for military families still assigned here.

KB Home and Bakewell Homes have had separate interests in residential development on the base going back to the early 1990s. The two firms got together in 1996 to propose the Seaside Highlands project.

After negotiations with the city - resulting in fewer homes and more open space - construction started earlier this year on 10 model homes and marketing has begun for the first 100-home phase of the development.

Marketing hasn't been a problem. The models opened two weeks ago. More than 1,500 qualified buyers - most from Monterey County - tossed their names into the lottery for the first 100 homes.

"We've been very busy here," smiled a member of the sales staff.

Lou Dell' Angela, Seaside's community development director, knows why the project is so popular. "For a while now, Seaside has needed new homes, larger and higher-priced."

Seen in the past as a moderate- to low-cost housing market, prices of residential real estate in Seaside, particularly single-family homes, have increased very rapidly, Dell' Angela said.

"Three years ago, the average single-family home price here was $200,000. That's now $350,000," he said. "The city felt there was a need for the kind of homes being built in Seaside Highlands to provide the opportunity for buyers here to move up."

This is KB Home's second base-conversion residential project. The national home builder has worked on Mather, a former Air Force base west of Sacramento.

"There's definitely a market for what we're building in Seaside. And we're very fortunate about the location, too," said Drew Kusnick, president for KB Home's South Bay operations.

Seaside Highlands is located east of the Pacific Coast Highway on a rise with views of the Pacific Ocean and wooded areas inland. The Bayonet golf course, formerly a military club but now open to the public, is just north of the housing development.

More than 30 of the home sites face the Bayonet golf course. The development plan also calls for the construction of a city-run sports park adjacent to the southern edge of Seaside Highlands.

The development plan mixes the floor plans, in two villages called The Bluff and The Cove, around a central open space. Most of The Bluff sites are stretched out along the higher ground with The Cove sites gathered in several clusters around Seaside Highlands.

Most of the floor plans appear to be aimed at second- and third-time home buyers and families with younger children. The floor plans can be as small as 1,725 square feet, designed with three bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths for empty- nesters or a retired couple. On the large end is a 3,631-square-foot plan with options that could push the four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom basic design up to six bedrooms and three baths.